the soul goes faster than light
by TolkienGirl
Summary: His eyes are nothing like a sun. (They can't run from each other forever.) [Post-TLJ, angst, introspection, and force-bond shenanigans.]


Luke Skywalker departed exactly at the moment he was ready to.

For Rey, it was much too soon.

.

"There's something I want to tell you," Leia says, the second evening of their flight. They are headed for the outer rim, with precious few stops along the way.

Rey is still in her sweat-stained garments. Rey is trying to be everything she must be, and it is harder than it looks.

Leia is wearing the same heavy gray that always cloaks her like armor, but Rey can see a faint shimmer among the close-woven threads.

Like starlight, almost, except that Rey is tired of stars.

"Yes?"

They are alone. That must be purposeful; the Falcon is not large enough that one can find empty space anywhere. And Rey is often at the helm.

"It's something Luke said to me." Leia's eyes are not like Luke's eyes—they are dark eyes, remote and burning. Too much like her son's. But Rey can see the stubbornness in the lines of her face, and some kind of haunted insistence that might be tenderness if it wasn't so often pain.

Rey sits down beside her and says nothing.

"You saw my son."

Rey nods.

"Not just Kylo Ren, or whatever in Hoth he's calling himself these days. You saw my _son_."

 _Ben_. Rey can feel her dashed hopes rising like water. Only water, with nowhere to fall, will flood. And she drowned in her hopes, because she would not follow Kylo, and Ben would not follow her.

"I tried," Rey says. As though this is one of a litany of promises she would make to Luke or Han or the parents who are never coming back. A litany of promises, so that someone will keep her. Only, this is not who she is anymore. This is not the Rey who said no to ruling the galaxy. And yet, in loneliness, it still is. "I mean, I thought I could reach him."

Leia spreads her hands on her knees. They are laden with rings. Maybe one of them is Han's.

"I saw him too." Some of the lines around her mouth are smile-lines. "He had a shot—on me—and he didn't take it."

Rey _burns_. "He could have killed me, but he didn't."

Leia nods. Then she says, "I thought it should make me happy, make me hopeful. Instead it broke my heart." Her eyes— _his eyes_ —bore into Rey's. "Do you know why?"

 _Because he killed his father_. Rey nods again. And she remembers, that he killed Snoke instead of killing her, but he also stayed behind.

 _And everything that followed after_.

Leia rises, every inch the general, as though the conversation has accomplished what she hoped. Rey still does not understand. And then Leia softens—as snow and sunshine are soft together—and she adds, quite quietly:

"Luke told me that no one is ever really gone."

.

She wishes that she had been…less forward in her pursuit of Luke's wisdom, not to speak of her plan for Kylo Ren's redemption. But wisdom is not something to spell out of books, and Rey has rarely even had books.

Now, the Jedi texts are hers. There are days when they land on out-of-the-way planets where the supply-squad leaving the Falcon falls into easy step behind her, Finn and Poe flanking her, as though she is the natural leader.

As though she knows.

And some days, she does.

Some days, there is even laughter.

(Every night, Rey's eyes stay open against the threat that comes with sleep.)

.

Sleep brings memory.

At least, she hopes it is not more than memory. Blood and red are not only the same color; they are the same heat and heartbeat, and Rey finds herself in the throne-room.

In the heaviness of sleep, it brings her to life again.

.

Sometimes, she thinks she didn't shut a door, she built a wall.

Sometimes, she thinks she plunged herself into deep waters, and is holding her breath.

Sometimes, she thinks he has stopped trying to reach her.

Sometimes, he almost makes it through.

.

Rey is looking at her hands.

"You seem different," Finn says. They sit shoulder-to-shoulder. Rose is resting again. Battle is swift; recovery is slow.

Rey hikes up the corner of her lips. "So do you."

"We have a lot of catching up to do."

She could tell Finn about him. Maybe she could even tell him about the pull to the dark, to the mirrored secrets of her desires, and then—

Rey cannot tell Finn of the warmth of a fire, and the touching of their hands.

She scrapes fingernails against palm, and says, "Did Chewie give you my message?"

Finn's smile is something like a sun. "Yes."

.

 _You're nothing, but not to me._

 _No one is ever really gone._

Deep breaths. She thinks Luke would have told her take deep breaths.

.

The dreams cease to be memories, and begin to be something else. Rey searches for stones in them, with a sense of inexplicable urgency. She needs to build something. Maybe it is a hut for one of the poor guardians of Ahch To. More likely it is a wall.

She feels a hand fall on her shoulder, and it takes everything in her not to turn.

.

He has found her.

Rey stops sleeping.

Chewie whines, and Finn's brow creases, and finally Leia takes her firmly by both hands and tells her to find a bunk.

Rey tries to tell her, but she cannot.

.

He is facing an endlessly wide window, and he is angry. She can see it in the broad lines of his shoulders.

He, of course, turns.

"Do you think you can hide from me?"

"It seems like the work of a lifetime," Rey snaps. But the snap is too mechanical. She has seen too much, borne too much, to find the pettiness that didn't even come naturally on Ahch To.

His fists are clenched. He is pale, but he is always pale. The scar grows fainter along the planes of his face. "You are a traitor," he hisses.

Rey steels herself, finds the memory of Luke, of his peace in the moments before he faded. Finds the memory of Han. And she takes a step forward, and she tells herself again— _no one is ever really gone._ "You call everyone in your life a traitor when they aren't willing to let you go," she says. "Or when they are. So which is it? It cannot be both."

And _she_ cannot be both light and dark, but she is.

He swallows down something, but it is not yet his rage. "I offered you everything!"

"I never asked for everything! I only wanted—"

He goes very still; by not finishing her sentence, she has said, perhaps, too much.

 _Never really gone_ is not the same as _coming back_. Rey would know.

Rey crosses the obsidian length of wherever shadow dream ends and Imperial spaceship begins, and does the improbable: she lays her hand along the length of the scar on his face.

His eyes are nothing like a sun, and his heart is never hers to hold, but he and his heart tremble beneath her touch. She can feel it.

.

This time it is Kylo Ren who slams the connection closed. Or maybe it is Ben Solo. He does it because he has to, because fear and denial are the first steps to letting go, and come back.

(Maybe, Rey hopes—maybe he can do both.)


End file.
